1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications services and more particularly to a method and system for presenting a graphical representation of telephone keys on a wireless terminal.
2. Description of Related Art
A relatively recent advance in telecommunications technology is an ability for people to wirelessly communicate with others. A wireless terminal may be, for example, a cellular phone, pager, personal digital assistant (PDA), or portable computer that an individual may carry to wirelessly communicate with others. The wireless terminal exchanges signals with a wireless network over an air interface. The wireless network, in turn, exchanges signals with a remote terminal.
The wireless terminal typically executes an application to establish and maintain a connection with the remote terminal. The application may be a dial-up application for dialing up the remote terminal. Alternatively, the application may be an e-mail application for composing, sending, and receiving e-mails with the remote terminal. Still alternatively, the application may be an instant messaging application for composing, sending, and receiving instant messages with the remote terminal.
The wireless terminal typically has a display screen. The display screen presents text and graphics associated with applications executable by the wireless terminal. Additionally, if the display screen is touch-sensitive, then the display screen may accept input from a user. For example, the wireless terminal may display a graphical icon of a telephone on the display screen. In this example, if the user touches the icon of the telephone on the display screen, then the wireless terminal will execute the dial-up application. The wireless terminal will terminate or suspend any other applications currently running on the wireless terminal. Additionally, the wireless terminal will display, over text and graphics currently on the display screen, a full-size telephone keypad. The full-size telephone keypad occupies substantially all of the display screen. The full-size telephone keypad includes numeric digits 0-9, *, and # keys, organized as four rows on the display screen, similar to that of a touchtone dialing keypad on a landline telephone.
The user can touch the keys of the full-size telephone keypad to dial the phone number of the remote terminal. Responsively, the wireless terminal will signal the wireless network to establish a connection with the remote terminal. The signal may take the form of dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) tones that define the phone number of the remote terminal. Alternatively, the signal may take the form of a data stream that defines the phone number of the remote terminal. The wireless network may receive the DTMF tones or the data stream, identify, from the DTMF tones or the data stream, the remote terminal, and establish the connection with the remote terminal.
The wireless terminal may terminate or suspend the dial-up application when the connection between the wireless terminal and the remote terminal is established. For example, the wireless terminal may clear the full-sized telephone keypad from the display screen. The wireless terminal will also return the user to the application being run prior to the execution of the dial-up application. The wireless terminal may display the text and graphics associated with the application being running prior to execution of the dial-up application. Therefore, the user can continue using the application at a point where he left off.